


a home among the stars

by septdix



Category: NU'EST, Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Magical Realism, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 17:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12822258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/septdix/pseuds/septdix
Summary: If you ever miss home, look up at the sky. You’ll be surprised by what the twinkling stars and the big, white moon can do for you.





	a home among the stars

When Minhyun steps into his apartment, it is only Cassie who greets him. 

He bends down to pet the small white Maltese behind her ears as she yaps at him, and a fond smile sneaks its way onto his face. It is only for a few minutes that he can maintain that smile, though, because as he sets his office bag down on his bedside table and pours Cassie her usual bowl of dinner, he becomes increasingly aware of the silence in the apartment. And by the time he pulls out the familiar box of takeout from its bag and settles down beside Cassie to eat his own dinner, the empty feeling that he now knows only all too well has started to pool at the bottom of his heart. 

It isn’t that he isn’t grateful, or content, because truly - he is. He is thankful for the life he’s managed to build for himself; his job as a finance manager gives him enough that money isn’t an immediate concern, and he has enough close friends that he comes home drunk at least once a week. He has a puppy who loves him to absolute death, and he loves her back even more. Sure, his parents live in a whole other district and he can’t see them often, but he considers himself fortunate that he even gets to see them at all, even if those days have become far and few in between.

He has all this, and yet, there is something almost painful about the silence that currently fills the space around him. It gets tiring doing the same thing day in and day out, and takeout can only fill him up for so long.

He misses home. Home - the salty scent of the Busan seaside, and his mother’s voice calling him down for dinner. The material of his grandmother’s skirts after the countless cycles of washing, soft like everything else about her. The feeling of drifting off to sleep to the sound of his parents’ soft conversations in the room outside, knowing that they’ll wake him up the next morning if he sleeps for too long. 

But those things feel a lifetime away. 

Once he is done with his jjajangmyeon, he carefully piles all of his two dishes into the plastic bag and scoops up Cassie’s empty bowl on his way to the kitchen. He scrubs the bowl until it’s spotless and shining, and slides the trash down the waste chute that is inbuilt under his sink.

Today, he decides to step out onto his balcony. When he looks up at the sky, a feeling of warmth settles over his heavy heart like a blanket when he realises that it is a full moon day. He traces the patterns on the moon with his eyes, scrutinizing every dip and curve on the grey surface. 

He remembers it all very clearly now; it had been his grandmother who had sat him down on her lap one day and held his chubby little hands in her small and rough ones to tell him the story of the woman who lives in the moon. 

“Minhyun-ah, all you have to do when you’re sad is look up at the moon when it’s a full circle, and the woman living in it will help you,” she had said.

“What will she do, grandma?”

“She’ll help you, my child. No matter what it is, she’ll help you.”

5 year old Minhyun had nodded curiously, but he had all but forgotten what she had said five minutes later when hunger took a hold on him and he started pestering her to cook him something.

Now, he looks at the shadows on the moon and wonders if the woman in it knows of his sorrows. In fact, he can almost make out the silhouette of a lady with her hair tied up in a bun from the darker parts of the surface if he squints. If he looks close enough, it almost seems as if the lady is moving, turning to her right to glance at Minhyun over her shoulder, and he steps closer to the railing in his balcony to get a closer look when suddenly - wait, what’s that?

The figure of the lady with a bun is indeed moving. Not only are the spots on the moon rearranging themselves, a complete grey shadow seems to be morphing out of the moon. Minhyun rubs his eyes once, twice, but what he sees doesn’t change. 

The grey shadow completely disconnects itself from the moon and soars through the sky, dancing from star to star as it becomes bigger and bigger with proximity. Minhyun is leaning over his railing in an almost precarious way as his eyes widen in wonder. As the grey shadow comes closer, Minhyun ends up moving back with a startled jump as he realises the absolute speed with which it is hurtling towards him. Another step back when he realises that yes, it is indeed coming right at him.

In a gush of cold wind, the grey shadow somehow takes its place right next to Minhyun on his balcony. What he sees in front of him an old lady, back hunched and face wrinkled with age, her shining white hair pulled back in a smooth bun. He looks her over once, and then looks back at the moon, only to realise that the moon is now a smooth white circle with no more grey patterning on it.

Although Minhyun is sure that he has never seen her before, something about the way her eyes twinkle makes him lead her out of the balcony and into his apartment. 

There are no introductions or explanations. In fact, there are no words exchanged at all. The old lady walks straight towards Minhyun’s kitchen, and with an absurd familiarity that he does not expect from someone who is seeing him and his flat for the first time, she sets about cooking dinner. And it is true that Minhyun just ate, but for some inexplicable reason, his stomach starts growling once he hears the sizzle of frying meat. 

What’s even more absurd than the fact that this lady somehow knows where everything in Minhyun’s kitchen is, is that Cassie - who has just finished doing her business - comes into the room and wraps herself lovingly around the lady’s ankles. Never has Minhyun ever seen her so calm around strangers, and yet he thinks he understands.

When she sets the table and calls Minhyun over, he is surprised to notice that she has cooked all of his favourites. And when he lifts a spoon of soup to his mouth, he relishes in the way it seems to be slightly salty - just like how his own grandmother, who has a slight tendency of always over-salting her food, makes her soup. 

The old lady stands there, watching him eat with a slight smile in her eyes before looking up at the rest of the room as if suddenly remembering something. She makes her way in quick strides to the feather duster that is hanging from a hook on the wall of the living room and starts dusting the apartment with an urgency that makes it seem like she is in her own house.

Minhyun knows that he has maintained his living space at an impeccable level of cleanliness, but he finds comfort in the way this lady is fussing over his belongings.

As he finishes up the last of his food and brings his utensils to the sink to wash them and keep them away, the lady appears back at his side and shoos him away from the area, assuring him that she will take care of it. Minhyun is instantly reminded of how is mother always used to tell him to go play after dinner when he was younger, that she’d do of the dishes. “Minhyun-ah, you can just go play. Mummy will wash the dishes this time!” she’d say, sounding almost fascinated by her son’s manners.

It feels nice to let someone do something for him, he realises, and he leans against the cabinets in his kitchen, watching her work her way through the plates and bowls and chopsticks. It feels nice.

It is to no one’s surprise, that when Minhyun lies down to sleep soon after that, he hears a familiar lullaby drifting through the air. The old lady is perched on the side of his bed, one hand stroking his hair as she hums a song that Minhyun has heard so many times that every vessel, every nerve in his body reacts to it.

His own grandmother had been the first to sing it to him, cradling a one year old in her arms while softly humming the song’s melody into his ears in an attempt to put the crying baby to sleep. After that, it had become mandatory that his mother then sing that to him every night, for baby Minhyun had grown used to it and now refused to go to sleep without listening it. Soon, it transformed into something of a tradition, with his mother - and then his sister, sometimes - murmuring the lyrics into him whenever he couldn’t sleep, or had had a bad day. 

It has been a long time since he’s last heard it. Looking at the old lady now, with the dark masking her features and denying her an identity, Minhyun finds himself wondering if this is somehow his mother, or his grandmother, or his sister. Maybe it is all of them, and maybe it is none of them. Maybe it is just the woman who lives in the moon, here to help him just like his grandmother always said she would.

When Minhyun wakes up in the morning, the apartment is once again empty apart from himself and Cassie. The moon is hanging low in the sky as the Sun takes its place amidst the clouds, and Minhyun peers out of his curtains to see that indeed, the woman has found her way back home. The white moon is once more speckled with grey spots.

~*~

It is hard to ignore or dismiss the woman who lives in the moon. At least, it is hard to ignore the moon itself.

For Minhyun, the moon melts a piece of itself into a piece of his home, and sends it all the way to Earth, so that Minhyun can comfort himself even if just for a while.

For the Daniel who lives two stories above Minhyun, it is not uncommon that a small kitten, with fur as white as the moon itself and eyes sparkling as bright as the stars above, finds its way into his apartment and into his arms. It simply sits there and purrs at him, and Daniel does not question who it is or where it comes from because all he knows is that it carries with it the spirits of his own two cats back home.

Guanlin, who lives in an apartment in the building adjacent to Minhyun’s, often comes home from long and draining days of university to a flat that is lit up with twinkling lights strewn all over the walls, the sofa, the coffee table. For the Guanlin whose biggest source of comfort has always been the skies he’s studying, the moon sends down the stars to Earth in hopes of lifting his spirit.

It doesn’t matter how, and it doesn’t matter when. But if you find yourself looking up at the night sky in search of a piece of home that you’re missing, be assured that the moon will help you.


End file.
